


Until I Sleep

by Willowingends



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Murder, Nightmares, Not Epilogue Compliant, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 05:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20830412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willowingends/pseuds/Willowingends
Summary: Some memories linger in the mind. They invade dreams, take away peace. Harry has been in the Forbidden Forest time after time and he has never been able to leave it's boughs.





	Until I Sleep

"Today we mourn not as individuals, but as a nation. Today we have received the official verdict after extensive investigations by not only our own auror department, but by many of our magical brethren. Today-"

Her trembling hands turn off the radio. Silence falls over the Burrow as the family sits together. No accusations, no tears. They're tired and they're finished. They just wonder, wonder why. 

Wonder why none of them tried harder. 

\-------

The dreams took him back. Time and time again he found himself on that familiar path. It was a path well worn, a carved swath of death through the woods. No seedlings grew on the tan ground, no moss stretched across the ground. It was just the same path, over and over. His footprints filling old steps that echoed like screams in his mind. And this time there was no comfort. This time he was alone. With the branches stretching above him with no stars twinkling down. With wind silent, nothing rattling the leaves. Nothing breathed in these dreams. Not even him. He wasn't sure he had ever taken another breathe after that day in May.

It was hard to believe he had when every time air entered his lungs it felt like choking on dirt. Who was he to breathe when so many could not. Who was he to be given that option when so many had not even had a chance?

He would wake from those dreams like one would sink in to sleep. Without warning, without meaning. Slipping between the world of dreams and the world of reality like a ghost slipped between walls. It was otherworldly. It didn't scare him. Nothing truly scared him anymore. 

"Harry." 

Nothing could scare him when he had stared death in the eyes. 

"Harry?"

When he had faced betrayal in the form of a man he trusted most. 

"Harry!"

When he had lost everything and came back to give everything and now-

Warm hands closed around his trembling ones. Tan and freckled around shaking brown. His eyes flicked up. Vision blurry it was like he was staring in to the depths of the earth. Brown, warm, concerned. So concerned. 

"Harry, please come back to me." Ginny's soft words, as soft as the hands that gently slid up his arms, up his shoulders, across his neck. Her nails pricking his skin softly and she filled his body with feeling again. Her legs straddling him, her luke warmth pressed against his chest, her soft hands cupping his face. 

Her body felt like a corpse in a chamber filled with water. She was the only one he thought could ever understand. She was so close to death but also-

Alive and in love and  _ here _ . 

He breathed in slowly, and she grounded him in this reality. She wasn't the only one who knew, but she saw him at his worst. And she deserved so much better than him. A hollow shell, a man who had forgotten how to live when so much of his life was shrouded in death. One day he would be able to tell her everything, and he knew she would understand. 

Work became all consuming. Not a day went past where he did not throw himself fully in to his work. Throw himself in front of coworkers. Risked everything, every time. To catch one more dark wizard. To save one more life. His own was forfeit, it always had been. A token to buy the life of another.

"You can't keep doing this." Ron said over a bottle of firewhiskey late one night. His eyes were piercing, focused on the hollowness of Harry's cheeks. The dark bags under his eyes. "You know Greengrass is just as capable as any of us. I have money down in her hexing you when you walk in to the office Monday morning for today's stunt." He reached out and when his hand gently rested on Harry's wrist it felt like a red hot branding iron. Concern flashed across his face when Harry jerked away, green eyes darting away.

Ron felt too alive, too real. There was something about him that screamed life. And there was something in that that made Harry sick. His best friend deserved better than to touch him. 

"Mate, your hands are freezing. Did you get hit by a jinx and not tell anyone?" 

"No." Harry responded. "It's fine. I'm alright. It's normal." Behind Ron's head he can see the trees waving in the wind caused by the cooling charms in the bar. 

Pushing away from the table he left the glass full. Untouched besides the imprint of his fingertips and all the ice melted away. 

It didn't matter what Ron said, what Daphne did. what mattered was she was still alive to hex him at all. 

It's with pamphlets and notes and books that Hermione renters his world. Not that she's left them, tucked away or grown beyond their reach. He just doesn't remember that they exist beyond memories now until they stand in front of him in all their bright, blazing glory. 

Her eyes are sad. 

He hates that look of pity. He knows he deserves it. Everyone pitied the dead and the damned. 

He pushes back from his desk, grabbing a stack of folders. He can see the dead path on the ground in front of him. Guiding him to the path of least resistance. Of easy rest, of sweet sleep. Harry should have known that trying to get passed Hermione was a failed endeavor from the start. 

"You need help." At least she was blunt and straight to the point. That was refreshing in a way. Like fresh air under the smell of rot. He smiled at her, his eyes flicking away from her concern, her accusation. 

"I'm fine Hermione. Just tired."

Her lips become drawn and she tries to push the pamphlets towards him again. "Me and Ron have seen a therapist Harry. I still see mine every week. Please, I'm just asking you to consider it."

"Listen Hermione." He snaps and he knows he'll feel guilty later as she hunches in on herself. So self-assured and head of her department, but still as jumpy as when they were on the run. He'll feel guilty later but right now all he feels is tired. "I'm handling it. I've got this under control."

"Throwing yourself in to your work recklessly like this isn't control. Not sleeping isn't controlling anything!" 

She's wrong. She's wrong because he doesn't dream anymore. He can't dream if he isn't sleeping. He grits his teeth and the dead path is under his feet as he leaves the office with her trailing behind. The world spins, but he refuses to give in. He can't subject anyone to the realities he's faced. 

"I have a lead to follow." He dismisses her as he steps in to the elevator and flicks the door closed with his wand. It prevents her and her sad expression from following him any further. 

The enclosed room has the stale air of death. The leaves shiver as the small room moves up and up and up. The tree trunks are never ending. He feels sick, his eyes burn. 

He steps out to the loud streets of London and has to grit his teeth against lashing out at all the stimulation across his skin. 

The lead isn't much, but he should have known better than to go out alone. To go out when every turn he took lead him back to that moment. Memories and dreams and reality bleed together so easily in moments of adrenaline. With a slash of his wand in a darkened room as a man leaped towards him with desperation and hate shining in his eyes, the eyes became slitted, red and his skin a sick pale color. A grin spreading across thin, mocking lips. A nightmare made true. 

Harry felt hollowness sink in to him as a familiar, sickly green filled the room. The still body landed on the floor with a heavy thud, and Harry felt his breathing become steadier. He had never found the killing curse something easy to use, and yet he would use it again and again if it would keep removing that man from the world. 

The body at his feet has long, messy brown hair. He doesn't feel sick, doesn't feel much of anything anymore. 

The investigation is quick, painless. He's Harry Potter, the boy who lived, the man who survived. No one wants to lock him up, charge him with a crime. Everything is so easily swept under the rug. So deeply hidden not even his friends will discover what he has done. It is that, out of all things that leaves him feeling sick. How can they throw around power so easily. How can he let them, after all he has fought? Why doesn't he fight back harder? Confess in the Atrium? Why is he content to let them protect each shattered piece of the person he once was. 

It was meant to be a prison sentence, he knows on some level. He wanted to be locked up. To be thrown away. To be put in the place where all dead things go. Instead they've offered him an escape. A way out. 

"There's a guest speaker position open at Hogwarts for the semester." The man in charge of closing up his case says nonchalantly. "You should take that position." 

And so Harry does. And so he does. 

The ancient castle looms above him as he walks up the familiar path. From the gates to the castle doors there is a siren's call. Singing, singing, beckoning him and his unplugged ears to the boughs of the Forbidden Forest. A soft cradle, it whispers. A cold earth bed. It's tempting, it's so tempting he must admit. To divert, to close his eyes and learn the truth. To find the part of himself that he knows he is missing. The final answer. But he had a job to do, and he had never left something undone. 

When McGonagall greets him he notices how old she looks. Her silver hair is streaked with white at long last and her wrinkles are more pronounced. She looks as though she has never born more burden then her students, but he can see her concern as she gazes at him. He was one of her Lions, one of her kits. He turns away before she can speak. 

"Where shall I put my cases?"

As soon as he enters the school he realizes he's made a mistake. At least at home, in London, the only thing that can haunt him are the trees. Here everything is a mirror image in to a world so unforgiving. Every wall carefully repaired has evidence of damage. Every meter has a splash of blood on the clean cobblestones. Every corner a hidden enemy, every body a dead friend. Every where he looks he's confronted with the mistake he made of waiting too long. 

Of being a coward until the end. 

A part of him would find pride in himself for lasting as long as he did. A part of himself long dead would marvel at the fact that his stubborn streak had outlasted his lackluster drive to always do that which was forbidden. Half a semester -- half a semester of pretending he was okay, that he could handle everything that was thrown at him. He was Harry Potter, he could do anything. Everything. Except die properly. 

The siren song was loudest at night. The temptation clearest in winter. The cold woods greets him like an old friend, an embrace that soothes all the screaming thoughts to sleep. 

\-----------

A radio crackled to life in a silent room.

"Today our thoughts are with not only the Potter-Weasley family, but all of Wizarding Britain, as we mourn the five year anniversary of the disappearance of Harry James Potter. As many of you will recall, Mr. Potter was last seen, by a Hogwarts third year, walking into the Forbidden Forest. The witness claims the man held his head high, his eyes bright and determined as he passed them. Only a year later the boy who lived was declared dead. I ask that you all now join me in thinking of his friends, his family, and the brave man who risked himself time and time again for all of us."


End file.
